My mom was an international flight attendant in the grand age of airlines. Later, me and my brother came along, but she still flew international and sometimes took us along. I remember opening up the cabinet for after school snacks, only to find it crammed with "weird" things like nutella and pignolli and other things I never learned. The bathroom always had that weird British toothpaste. I remember the first time I had sparkling water. My childhood favorites were steak, fries, chocolate mousse and sparkling water. I adored carbonara and refused to believe that spaghetti with tomato sauce was pasta for years. I suppose in retrospect, my name, heathervescent, came 15 years later than it should have. Now I can drink all the sparkling water I care too.
Enter my first European trip in 12+ years. I hate to admit it, but I was a bit over Europe. I spent lots of travel time before I was 18 visiting this amazing place. I walked around Paris, Athens. Was up at 3am in London and visited all the traditional tourist (and non-tourist) places with my mom, sk8er brother and yours truly as proto-punk. I wandered the bazaars in Cairo and Istanbul (Not Constantinople.) I even ran away from Northern Germany with my best high school friend to Brussels 20 years ago.
Here I find myself in Brussels - and Belgium again. 20 years after my little international escapade. Being driven through fields on the way to the office. Fields that feel so familiar and yet completely different.
It's a strange sensation. I'm completely comfortable here. I am loving the cool weather and tall green trees more than I could imagine. I love passing the fields. I feast my eyes on the brick buildings. Brick is not a building material much used in my beloved City of Angels.
I walk the streets, my favorite fluevogs tapping out a rhythm. The boyf would not believe the amount of walking I have done with not a thought. I find myself stumbling through french I had not spoken (except a few phrases I regularly use) for almost two decades. The words and sounds come back. My vocabulary is shit, but I remember how much I loved the way you form your mouth when speaking French. It's much softer than Portugues.
At dinner, the woman at the table helped translate when I didn't understand the waiter asking me how to cool the steak. I think, Bloody in Uma Thurman style, but say rare. Later as we chat, I make the excuse that I am bad at French because I speak much better Portugues. What a surprise, she speaks it too. She with the Portuguese accent and me with my new world Brazilian one. What a surprise. I should be used to these kinds of surprises, but I never am. Delighted every time.
I'm here in this place. I've captured the feeling; but can't describe it yet. The nuance, the difference, the understanding, the comparison. The familiar. The new. It will come. I will describe it one day. I can wait.
One of my favorite "Heather stories" is regarding spaghetti. As a young family we rarely went out for dinner. But this one night, we drove to a nearby Iowa town to the latest health food restaurant in the state. Your father & I struggled over what to order for this precocious delightful 5 year old, settling on spaghetti with one meat ball. You did like hamburgers after all!
When the sweet waitress arrived and set your plate of spaghetti (with the red sauce and meatball perfectly arranged in the center)in front of you, you threw a fit! You screemed loudly in your assertive 5 year old voice "That's not spaghetti!"!!! You didn't believe us that it was spaghetti. You said, "No! Spaghetti's white!" It was then that we realized that you had only eaten spaghetti carbonara your entire life and had never had red sauce spaghetti. The waitress took the offending plate away and served you plain spaghetti with butter & parmesan and you were quite happy. That was the evening that you had your first serving of chocolate mousse for dessert! It had tiny little carob chips (a health food restaurant, remember!) sprinkled on the top. And the rest is history!
Posted by: Portland Firefly | September 03, 2011 at 02:52 PM